


Opal Interlude

by pixietwisk



Series: Something More [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Background Relationships, Canon Compliant, F/M, M/M, post TRK;
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 12:04:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7438136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixietwisk/pseuds/pixietwisk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Opal from her perspective - emerging from a dream and growing into her own person.</p><p>This is a companion piece to Something More.</p><p>She loves Kerah, but they are pieces of each other, and she’s not sure loving Kerah is any different from loving the wind in the trees or the taste of dew on the grass or the sun or the stars or herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Fool

In the beginning, she likes the way things change in this other place, this not-dream place. When the light fades into soft darkness, all the grass and trees and the house and the people are the same as they were when it was light. They smell the same. They taste the same. They’re just harder to see, although Orphan Girl can see much better in the darkness than people can. When the dark evaporates with the sun, everything is just as it was the last time it was light. Everything does change, but mostly just a little at a time, in ways she can understand and predict, in ways not caught in the tempest of Kerah’s heart and mind. That spider web starts as one strand, is woven into many, and breaks apart when the spider catches its prey. Beautiful shimmering threads remain exactly where they should be, only taking life with a breath of breeze, rather than growing to strangling tentacles. Winter comes and all the plants and animals go to sleep. It stays and stays until it goes and the leaves bud and unfurl, and rabbits linger in the dusk, and the birds return to sing the songs they sang before they left.

Kerah is a little strange and different. In his dream place, he did not hide from her, and he was so loud there –all terror or anger or joy or sadness or swallowed in darkness or bursting with light. In this place, he is still those things, but they’re all buried deep in his soil, nurturing his roots, mostly flashing to the surface after a big storm. There’s more joy and light, now, than there was in the dream place, and she sees those more than the others in the turning of his leaves and the shape of his branches.

She can still feel a little of what Kerah thinks and feels. She is not inside his dream place anymore, every element screaming it at her, but she can feel the shape of it flowing around him anyway. When Adam is with them, or even just with Kerah, it is an enormous, bright, colorful happiness that tickles the backs of her arms and brightens the edges of her vision. Better than this, though, is that when Adam is with them or just with her, she feels safety and calm belonging to her alone. In the dream place, Adam could only be to her what he was to Kerah - needing and hoping and happy and afraid. But out here, as much as Adam is Kerah’s, he is his own too, and he can be a little hers as well.

She loves Kerah, but they are pieces of each other, and she’s not sure loving Kerah is any different from loving the wind in the trees or the taste of dew on the grass or the sun or the stars or herself. She loves Adam a little because Kerah loves him so hugely it makes Adam shiny to her, but mostly because she chooses him and he chooses her too and her own choice is glorious to her.

Time, specifically the way it’s considered in this place, it new to her. She asks Kerah about her watch and he tells her numbers. She asks Adam about her watch. He starts with numbers, but moves from hours to days to weeks to seasons to earth to moon to sun and she gets bored and loses track, but she likes to hear him talk, so she watches him move his pretty slender hands as if he is organizing the entire universe just for her to look at. When Adam is away, she asks Kerah about her watch and seasons and moon and sun. Kerah shakes his head. “Fucking Parrish,” he sighs, but there is adoration coloring it a warm orange. Kerah digs up crayons and paper. They draw some pictures and make a story and she begins to understand. But Orphan Girl has whispered secrets with the _tir e e’lintes_ and she knows time only imposes on you when you measure it too much. Kerah has also whispered secrets with the _tir e e’lintes,_ though he has buried most of them deep in his head, so he only measures a few things, time not usually being one of them. He saves most of his measuring for the thousands of things related to Adam, who is always measuring everything.

There is a series of seasons after Orphan Girl is freed from Kerah’s dream place. She prefers to be outside to observe this marvelous, slow, gradual progression from fall to winter to spring to summer and back again in the same unrelenting order. During much of the first winter, she is shut up too much in house places: the main house of the Barns and Gansey’s huge awful warehouse. Everything in the house places smells and tastes dead, not decomposing but inert, not having lost life but having never seen it at all. These places are far too static for a dream girl from a dream forest. They make her feel bored and lonely and trapped.

Kerah keeps trying to give her things to sooth her moodiness: dream things, toys, food. She doesn’t want any of these things. She needs to let the shifting air play over her tongue, to test the varying textures of the leaves as the days bleed into one another, to hear the intricacies of the birds’ secrets. Without these, why leave the dream at all? Without these, she is just another of Kerah’s things.

Adam, of course, magician, teases out the source of her growing melancholy enough to find a solution. It is another cold, dreary day and she is imprisoned in the Barns house place, which is far better than the Monmouth house place, with Kerah and Adam. She and Kerah have been slashing at each other all morning and they are both bleeding, but Orphan Girl is bleeding more because she can’t stand to see Kerah bleeding and Adam is spending all his attention soothing Kerah’s wounds and not hers. They vanish into the depths of the house place by themselves for what might be short but feels long (she scowls at her watch, turning its measuring face away). Kerah comes back and sits on the floor beside her. His dream place says to her, _guilty_. She leans into him and he hugs her, sealing up most of the cuts he made before.

Adam returns with his magic picture cards. Orphan Girl is very interested in these. They are pretty and a little scary in the same way as a dream. They feel a little like Cabeswater felt and smell a little like Cabeswater smelled. She licked the back of one once, when he wasn’t looking, but they don’t taste like dream places at all, and she dared not bite one for confirmation. When Adam shuffles them, she can feel his dream place growing and stretching and sniffing the air. His dream place is as powerful as Kerah’s, though he keeps it wrapped much closer around him than Kerah does, and his song always sings _hungry, know, fix, protect_.

He sits down on the floor across from her and offers her the deck. She is nervous, he’s never given her all his cards before.

“Pick two,” he says.

The cards are so large she has trouble handling them. All of them call in contradictory voices as she sifts through them, but there are two that call loudest. She hands these reverently back to Adam. Kerah frowns over the whole proceeding, but he is watching.

The first card is the High Priestess. The second is the Sun. She likes this one in particular, it screams outside, explore to her, the smudgy image seeming to her to be green shadows and secret streams. The first, the High Priestess, seems to be the vague shape of a thoughtful face, and is colored in a changing way, something like dream places. Adam lays a hand on the floor, delicately touching both cards. He looks somewhere beyond the cards and she can feel the pulse of the _ama via_ reaching up to meet his seeking. It scares her a little, feeling his dream place pulling from the _ama via_ and reaching for her own essence. He takes a deep breath, his dream place settling back close to him again.

When he looks at her, something extraordinarily bright shines from his eyes, peering directly into her deepest self, the mysterious dream thing even Kerah could not understand. “What does it mean?” she asked, her voice trembling a little.

He taps the High Priestess. “You know about a lot of things we don’t see or understand. You need your freedom to know them. Without it, you’re less than you could be.”

She nods emphatically. Yes, she needs to be her own, just like he needs to be his own.

He taps the Sun. “This house isn’t good for you.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Nothing’s wrong with the house. It’s not like I chained her in the fucking basement! She’s outside most of the time anyway. Where is she supposed to go?”

She shrinks under Kerah’s fresh wave of hurt. Adam frowns at him. “Shut up, Lynch. This isn’t about you or the house.” He turns back to Orphan Girl. “Ronan’s right though. The Barns is the best place we have for you to live.”

“It’s just so . . . not alive.”

Kerah’s expression barely covers the raw devastation this tiny sentence wreaks. Orphan Girl flinches, assaulted by the silent screaming. Still, she is growing dusty and shriveled. She has to scream louder.

“Maybe . . . I could have my own house place. Still at the Barns. Just, near the woods?”

“By the goddamned woods? There could be fucking bears or cougars out there. You’d be a fucking midnight snack! You and your bullshit witch cards, Parrish!” Kerah cries, jumping up to pace.

Orphan Girl and Adam are both frowning at him now. “Are you a dreamer or not?” Adam asks coldly. “Can’t you come up with some predator repellant? Have you ever had anything going after your totally helpless sleeping cows?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean-“

“Kerah!” she calls, and it is more like a bird than a girl but she can’t help it. “Please?”

“Look at her,” Adam says softly, and she knows she will win because she has won Adam and Kerah will not deny Adam anything, ever.

The interminable winter begins to improve as her special house place takes shape. Kerah dreams her socks and boots she hates, but must wear when they leave the Barns to look like she has feet like everyone else. Orphan Girl is not particularly interested in being like people, but Kerah and Adam both insist she wear them if she leaves the Barns. It takes her two miserable days, crying and cawing and screeching to learn to walk in them. Kerah says he’s going to just cut off both her legs and feed them to a wild boar, but he picks her up just as gently every time she falls. When Adam appears, even though his shoulders and eyes sing _tired_ , he quietly holds her hand as she drags herself, stumbling, up and down the stairs, over and over, calm and steady no matter how she shrieks.

Once she has mastered the horrid boots, she is allowed to go to more outside places with Kerah and his friends. Adam takes her to the library to look at pictures books with animal dens or tree houses or fanciful fairy dwellings. She gets to go to Fox Way. Blue’s room is like a forest and a dream and a house place all at once. It’s more of a dead house place than she wants hers to be, but it’s appealing. Alone with Blue, she talks about the things she wants her house place to be. Blue tells her about different kinds of nests and burrows. Blue draws pictures for her, which they decorate with bits of feathers and fabric. They make squishy little doll furniture out of scraps of cardboard and colorful cotton. Orphan Girl uses these treasures to show Kerah a vision from her very own dream place.

Some of her house is built from things Kerah buys at a store – wood and nails and blocks and mortar. Most is built from things she gathers from the woods – particular smooth stones in a carefully designed pattern before her door; at least one branch from every type of tree surrounding the Barns; mud and clay from the creek. Some is dream things – a huge, glowing lily hanging from the ceiling that can go dark when she wishes; a bed of the softest, sweetest-smelling moss, ever growing; blankets of fiery-colored feathers and black silky fur.

Alone there, in her own little den, Orphan Girl can step swiftly and silently as only a hooved girl can in and out of her dreams, which may find her galloping through the ice shards in a comet’s tail or the pores of a leaf or the years in the life of a squirrel. She can wake and taste the living night on her tongue and know with certainty that she is not just another of Kerah’s dream things. She is her own thing.


	2. The Chariot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She retreats to a hallway, peeking into the room where all of them are merging into one another. They flit toward the kitchen, like a little flock of birds, all except Henry. He loiters behind in the living room, sliding down against the doorway to sit on the floor. He removes something from his pocket. It is winking silver and tinkling with a high, clear music. Like a clever raven, Opal approaches nonchalant. She tiptoes to the coffee table, slides underneath, and pushes some of Chainsaw’s blocks around. While she is watching Henry his gaze flicks to her. She freezes, immobile. His eyes smile, but his mouth does not.

Amid this cold dreary winter, Henry becomes her special favorite.  She is not a measuring creature, evaluating love in gradients and weights.  If she loves, she loves.  If she doesn’t, she doesn’t.  KerahandAdam as one thing may be the center of her orbit, but Henry perceives that she need not orbit anything at all.

Henry gives her a wonderful gift.  He comes to Barns for dinner with Gansey and Blue.  She likes that they arrive in the silver car that doesn’t smell as terrible as the noisy orange one.  This is the first time all of them have come to the Barns since the night before the demon was destroyed.  She feels shy and nervous, hiding under Kerah’s legs and tripping him until he barks, “Watch it, brat!”  He puts a comforting hand on her head at the same time though, so she knows he is worried about her.

Everything surrounding Blue and Gansey says _comfortable_.  They already belong here, maybe even more than Orphan Girl.  Henry calls to her without speaking.  He is not at all sure he belongs here.  Kerah is cautious about him.  She can feel Kerah’s dream place miasma testing Henry’s unfamiliar one.  Henry’s face wears a pleasant expression, but his body is careful not to touch anything uninvited. 

She retreats to a hallway, peeking into the room where all of them are merging into one another.  They flit toward the kitchen, like a little flock of birds, all except Henry.  He loiters behind in the living room, sliding down against the doorway to sit on the floor.  He removes something from his pocket.  It is winking silver and tinkling with a high, clear music.  Like a clever raven, Opal approaches nonchalant.  She tiptoes to the coffee table, slides underneath, and pushes some of Chainsaw’s blocks around.  While she is watching Henry his gaze flicks to her.  She freezes, immobile.  His eyes smile, but his mouth does not. 

“Hello, forest lady,” he whispers.

Orphan Girl blinks, but does not say anything yet.

He holds up the silver thing.  “I bring a tribute.”

She approaches warily.

“What is it?” she asks, very quietly.

Now he flashes a showy smile.  “A bracelet.  You wear it on your arm, making music wherever you go.”

Tentatively, she reaches out her hand.  Deftly, Henry wraps it around her small wrist twice and clasps it.  She wiggles her arm. The tiny bells chime delicately.  She points at something sparkling in many colors in between the bells.

“What is this?” she asks reverently.  It looks like a dream thing.  The chips of milky rainbow are all over the bracelet.

“It’s an opal.  It made me think of you.”

“Why?” she asks, a little forceful and suspicious, the way Kerah would ask.

“Hmmm,” Henry says.  A little amber light glows from his pocket and he pulls out his phone thing, as if the answer is in there instead of inside him.  “It is called a stone, but is not really a stone.  It will show you many colors, but the colors are a trick of what we see, not really inside the stone.  And it is supposed to help with good dreams.”

All of a piece, she adores him.  It is all the more thrilling to know she adores him when she knows Kerah does not.  He has chosen to court her all alone, rather than court Kerah for her favor.

“What is your name, wise boy?”

“Henry.  What is your name, forest girl?”

Her brow creases.  “Orphan Girl, I think.”

Henry shakes his head.  “That is Ronan’s . . . “ he flaps his hand, “his dream name for you.  What do you call yourself?”

“I don’t know.”

“We shall consider.  Let’s go eat,” he says, standing and taking her hand in his.

Kerah and Adam both eye her hand in Henry’s sharply.  She squeezes it, trembling her little bells, chin jutted at Kerah defiantly.

“Oh, how pretty,” says Blue, bending down to her.  “May I see?”

Opal proudly jingles it for her.  Blue’s face goes a little odd as she looks up at Henry.  “Are those real opals?”

Henry just shrugs.  “I thought she would like it.”

Gansey cuts off whatever Blue is about to say.  “Ah, clever.  In the medieval period, the opal was called the eye stone, used to aid in second sight.  They were considered lucky.”

“I want a name,” blurts Opal.

Kerah flushed as an awkward silence descends over the kitchen.

“And I want to pick it,” she finishes.

“Sure, whatever,” Kerah says casually, but she can see his neck and shoulders say, _sad, angry, guilty_.

Orphan Girl cannot stand to see him distressed.  She goes immediately to him, pressing herself against his leg.  “I’m hungry.  What did you get for me?”

Everyone busies themselves getting dinner together.  When all eyes are away except Orphan Girl’s, Adam settles a small kiss just below Kerah’s ear.  She feels the spark of delight shiver through him, cutting his _sad, angry, guilty_ into smaller pieces he can swallow without choking.

As they eat, they all talk and talk and talk.  Orphan Girl plays with her pretty bracelet, thinking of how much better the bells will sound in the dark field or beside the stream in the woods in the morning.

“Opal,” she says quietly, but Kerah is listening to her very carefully, all the things she says and doesn’t say too.  Their eyes meet, and he’s the one she’s telling.  “My name is Opal.”

He nods curtly.  A little way from her, she glances to see Henry nodding, a little smirk on his mouth.  When Blue and Gansey and Henry leave, Opal can feel Kerah approving of Henry.  “Cheng,” he says.  Henry’s head jerks up.  “Next time, dinner’s on you.”

Henry’s smile is wide and real, not so flashy.  He spares a special little wave just for her. 

_Opal_ she says to her own heart.  _Your name is Opal_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am working toward a definitive ending, but it will take me a few chapters to get there.


	3. The Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Declan is not a dreamer, but his own dream place weaves a subtle, enigmatic magic around him, seeping through his smile and coloring his voice. Declan believes he is utterly unmagical, but Opal tastes the tang of magic all around him. He is made from dreamer and dream, just as Kerah is. It soon becomes clear that Declan is the superior wellspring for stories. No matter how many times she asks, or how he rolls his eyes and defers, he always has another to feed her greedy heart.

The first year is for testing – for smelling, for watching, for tasting, for listening.  The next few are for stories.  While she remains happy to be free from the clutches of Kerah’s dreaming, she discovers there is a cavernous wanting buried deep inside her for the fluid weirdness of dreams.

As the second year begins, when summer edges past ripe to rotten, from full wakefulness to the very edge of autumn’s sleepy sighs, Kerah and Adam vanish for the span of a few days and Kerah returns without him.  Blue, Gansey, and Henry stop visiting, having charged off somewhere in their noisy orange car.  Opal avoids the deadened house place more than ever.  Any time she enters, she is nearly crushed by the press of Kerah’s lonely longing.  The aura of his dream place stretches low and wide, seeking vainly for Adam’s to give it shape.

Everything is so stagnant, Opal beings to miss the dream place, just a little.  She begs Kerah more and more frequently to take her to Fox Way.  The women there understand time and tree secrets the way she does.  She likes to sit on the roof with Gwenllion where she can remove her hateful shoes, and speak in the language of her being, and sing songs everyone else has forgotten.  Gwenllion knows many songs, some of them sweet, some of them wise, some of them bloody, some simply old. 

There are often children there and Opal likes to play among them as if she is also a child, which she sort of is and sort of isn’t.  The children make themselves the centers of marvelous shifting epics which include Opal but don’t force her to be nothing but a dependent companion.  She can be whatever she chooses, but finds her store of ideas disappointingly limited. 

She tells the children’s stories to Kerah as they ramble through the Barns.  “What stories do you know?” she demands from him.

Kerah is thoughtful and a little distant.  “My father told a lot of stories, but I don’t really remember them.  Not the right way –the way they’re supposed to go.”  His mouth thins.  “It’s Declan who knows all the stories.”

Opal sighs.  “Don’t you have _any_ stories for me?” she pleads.

Kerah is quiet for a long while, so long Opal is certain he will not answer.  “I can probably dig up some books and read them to you,” he says, reluctant.

“Let’s find them now!’ she crows, leaping up and down on her dainty hooves.

“I’m busy now, runt,” he responds gruffly, “later.”

Opal pouts and stomps but grows bored with his recalcitrance and gives up until after dinner.  Kerah goes through the closets in his brothers’ rooms until he unearths a dusty book of fairy tales.  Opal makes a face.  She knows these things from Gansey’s awful warehouse.  They’re abominable uses for what were once living trees –nothing but white leaves covered in black markings.  And yet, Kerah opens the covers and every page is alive with richly colored pictures that remind her a little of the picture cards from Fox Way.  Maura has told her little stories from the picture cards, but they are insubstantial meandering things.  Kerah’s melancholy seeps from him as he flips through the pages.  He is pretending to be annoyed, but his lonely is shredding him under his skin, and a rose-scented memory of a loving hand on his curly-haired head is a knife in his heart.

She whips the book from Kerah’s hands and darts out the door, down the stairs.

“What the fuck?” he snaps, chasing her.  She taunts him in the doorway.

“If you want to hear the story, I need the fucking book, brat.”  His angry confusion is helping him escape, but he is not free yet.

“Bethany told me you hear bedtime stories in bed.  My bed is in _my_ house.”

“You can listen in here, _then_ go out to bed,” he argues, exasperated.

“No,” she says, mutinous, “Bedtime story in my bed.”

Her jaw is set, whole body ready to fight.  Kerah needs to get out of this house, and he knows it.  His temper is all for show as he tugs on shoes and a sweatshirt to follow her to her house.

Amid moss and fireflies and the golden lily’s glow, she can feel Kerah shake off the weight of memory.  He reads two stories, bringing context to the pictures, before closing the book. 

“More!” she demands, delighted.

There is something soft about him now, even as he shakes his head.  “Tomorrow, you greedy little monster.”  He leaves her the book and she leafs joyfully through the pictures until she falls asleep.

On Sunday, Declan and Matthew come to visit.  Usually, when they come, Opal romps with Matthew while Kerah and Declan circle each other cautiously.  She is always wary of Declan, as he is of her.  This time, instead of dragging Matthew out on the grounds, she marches straight to Declan, who eyes her with suspicion.

“Tell me a story,” she commands.

Declan narrows his eyes at her.  “Why?”

“Kerah says you know all the stories – the ones from your father.  I want to know what they are.”

Something strange crosses his face.  She has to keep her feet firmly planted to avoid being washed off balance by the wave of bitter yearning sweeping off him.  “Most don’t have happy endings,” he warns.

She shrugs, in the same manner as Kerah.  “I don’t care about that.  I want them anyway.”

He considers for a long moment.  “Are you going to be quiet?” he asks, and she can tell from his smirk that this is something of a joke she doesn’t understand.  She can feel how this question slices at Kerah like a sword.  Opal says nothing.  She plants herself on the worn wood of the porch, near his feet, not uttering a sound.  She is remarkably good at being quiet, when she needs to be.  Declan spares a thoughtful glance at Kerah before he leans elegantly against a post and begins.

Declan’s story is dark and tangled and glorious, about a mortal hero and his dealings with the treacherous fay.  The place where Declan stops is not really an end, but there is so much to consider about it she is not disappointed.  This story feels like dream places feel, familiar and frightening all at once. 

Declan is not a dreamer, but his own dream place weaves a subtle, enigmatic magic around him, seeping through his smile and coloring his voice.  Declan believes he is utterly unmagical, but Opal tastes the tang of magic all around him.  He is made from dreamer and dream, just as Kerah is.  It soon becomes clear that Declan is the superior wellspring for stories.  No matter how many times she asks, or how he rolls his eyes and defers, he always has another to feed her greedy heart.

Over the first few months, she wheedles them from him on the steps of the porch or sprawled in the grass, weaving daisy chains while he leans against the side of a barn.  Declan can usually only be persuaded to part with one at a time, as if they are disappearing treasures in a dragon’s hoard.  Matthews pays inconsistent attention to these recitations, depending on whether Declan or the Barns itself has captured his whimsy in a particular moment.  Kerah pretends to ignore them, but he often lurks just on the edge of sight, gobbling up the gilded thread of it as insatiably as she.

It is a humid summer day when this pattern changes.  Everyone is sweating and drinking sweet tea and lolling in the shade of a large beech edging the fields.  Matthew is snoring gently.  Kerah and Adam are pretending to help her braid grass stalks into a mat, but they are mostly playing at some complicated interaction of hands and fingers that will undoubtedly lead to them shutting themselves away somewhere for hours after Declan and Matthew leave.  Opal ignores them in favor of begging a story from Declan.  It takes longer than usual.  He darts a gaze to assess Ronan’s distraction before he begins.  She can sense a certain kind of agitation surrounding him, which amplifies the shifting magic of his dream place.  This story feels different from the usual ones, a bit darker, more subtle, giving more definitive character to the fay than she’s heard him recite before.  Kerah’s attention has been drawn from Adam.  He is staring fiercely at Declan, who is only looking at the canopy of leaves, lost in his own telling.

“That’s not one of Dad’s,” Kerah interrupts.

To Opal’s great annoyance, Declan stops.  “Sure it is,” he says easily.  “You don’t know all of them.”

The smoothness tells both her and Kerah that this is a lie.  Opal does not care that it is a lie, but she can feel Kerah simmering over it.  She leaps nimbly up from the grass, trotting to stand over Declan.  She holds out a small hand to him.

“We’re going for a walk,” she says, imperative, no room for argument.

He frowns at her.  She can see him looking for an excuse to refuse.  Adam starts to rise.

“I’ll go with you if you want company,” Adam offers.  She almost always wants Adam’s company, but now she is in pursuit of a rare and fascinating story.  She is in pursuit of Declan.

“I only want Declan,” she says softly. 

Something he doesn’t conceal quickly enough happens on his face.  For a moment he looks both surprised and young.  No one exclusively prefers Declan, not even Declan.  “Please?” she begs, giving him her most effective orphan girl look.  The long grass hides his expression from everyone but Opal.  His voice is tired, condescending, but his eyes are curious, almost hopeful.  “Fine.  But not too long.  We need to go soon.”

He takes her hand gently, hesitantly, but follows her nonetheless.  She can sense Adam distracting Kerah from suspicion to help her.  She is grateful he is such a good listener, always hearing what isn’t being said.  As soon as they are out of earshot of the others, Declan says, “I suppose you just want to hear the end of the story.”  There’s something a little sad about the way he says it.

Opal does not speak for a bit.  She takes them deeper into the wood.  As they walk, she begins to point out things to him.  A tree she thinks would be good for wood sprites; a stream that appears and disappears in a way that looks a little illogical – perhaps a path to the Otherworld at dusk; an abandoned bird’s nest possibly raided by a war party of pixies.  She shows him, over this little tour, how she has catalogued all the stories he’s given her so far, how she collects and treasures them, how they help to color in this ordinary world she was pulled into.  They reach a small, sheltered clearing, decorated with a ring of mushrooms.  Opals pulls Declan to sit beside her on a large flat rock.

“The story you were telling is your own,” she says to him.

“I thought Ronan told you – my father was the keeper of every story in the world.  I just trot them out on special occasions,” he replies dryly.

“It was better than those,” Opal replies.  “It had your magic in it.”

Declan goes stiff and shuttered beside her.  “I don’t have any magic.  I’m no dreamer.”

“It’s not the same kind as Kerah, but it’s magic enough for me.  Will you finish it?”

He is quiet for a long time, the only noises around them bird song and wind in leaves and rustling of undergrowth.  It’s a perfect setting for Declan’s story and the performer in him cannot resist it.  He finishes the tale, only for Opal, and it is every bit as satisfying as she knew it would be.

Over the next few years, Opal learns to read in English and Latin and Greek.  She is given many beautiful books full of myths and fairy tales.  She even receives a deck of picture cards like Adam’s, only hers are covered with trees and flowers and vines and animals.  Gwenllion and Adam both teach her to use them differently, but they only tell her snatches of stories of the world she is already in.  She can access stories on her own to spirit her away to inaccessible places, but Declan’s stories are always her favorites.  Together, they walk the wild woods, Opal leading him to trackless places, Declan’s voice leading her to invisible ones.


	4. The Wheel of Fortune

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cabeswater is a dream place, but it is so much Kerah and Adam she wants to scream. Adam's school is close enough now that he is home every week. The frequency of his presence and the tighter knot he and Kerah have been wrapping around their life together has sanded off most of Kerah's sharp edges. Despite her love for both of them, it's squeezing her to death. Their dream spaces have tangled and intertwined inextricably, as deep as a black hole but ever narrowing around the increasing responsibilities of their lives. Her dream space expands like radiation from a supernova - spreading, changing, becoming part of the entire universe.

Opal is tired of the way things change in this place.  Everything in this tiny corner of the world is always the same.  The seasons march in perfectly timed circles, following each other obediently to nowhere.  The only strange things are Kerah's dream things, and he's too careful and controlled with them now for them to truly spark any joy for her.  The only bright points in the winter and spring are the talks she has with Gwenllion, the music of her pipes, and Declan's stories, all of which let her mind go to places more like dream places.  She wants to find the path to Tir Na Nog, she wants to cross an ocean, she wants to fly higher than Chainsaw, she wants to know what the bark of olive trees in Greece tastes like.

For seven years, she's explored her little world.  She knows every wildflower, every blade of grass, every bird and bee and mosquito.  She's befriended other children met at Fox Way and through the home school program she engaged in to please Adam.  It's been good to have friends, as they might be called, but as they grow away from childhood, their dreams and interests migrate indoors and turn in narrowing circles Opal finds terribly uninteresting.  There are a couple mercurial girls she can enjoy being with, but not too often.  The boys Opal used to play with now look at her as if wanting to decode or unravel her, so she's backed far away from them, as aware of danger as a rabbit in a fox's territory.

She knows what people do when they're attracted to each other.  Adam and Kerah leave glimmering wakes of pleasure all over the places they kiss and touch and whisper to one another.  Opal cannot imagine why they are so enraptured with it.  If she were to get that tangled with another person, share that type of intimacy, she might be swallowed whole by the dream spaces they all wear like coats.  She is already pulled from her own dreams into the dreaming of the people she loves against her will.  She creeps unseen around the edges, out of fear they will unwittingly trap and keep her.  Opal does not want to be locked inside one person's dream space ever again.  But she and Gwenllion suspect there is another type of dream space, something like the way Declan describes the Otherworld, and Opal is beginning to believe it is there she truly belongs.

Cabeswater is a dream place, but it is so much Kerah and Adam she wants to scream.  Adam's school is close enough now that he is home every week.  The frequency of his presence and the tighter knot he and Kerah have been wrapping around their life together has sanded off most of Kerah's sharp edges.  Despite her love for both of them, it's squeezing her to death.  Their dream spaces have tangled and intertwined inextricably, as deep as a black hole but ever narrowing around the increasing responsibilities of their lives.  Her dream space expands like radiation from a supernova - spreading, changing, becoming part of the entire universe.

The _amae vias_ call to her, waking and sleeping, in the language of dreams, "follow us."

She has begun to suspect that she is not entirely Kerah's dream thing.  She has begun to suspect she is the _amae vias_ ' dream thing, gifted to the Greywaren to help protect their place of power from thieves.  She has done that for Cabeswater, but there are other places.  The _amae vias_ are long and threatened.

Every night, she dreams of places far away, full of plants and birds strange to her nose and tongue, only recognizable from the Jepson Manual or her Sibley's Bird Guide, or one of the other marvelous books she has learned to decipher on her own.

Finally this night, at dinner, listening to Kerah and Adam talk about the mind-numbing business of the farm, she drops her fork with a clatter.

"I need to go somewhere!" She announces louder and more urgent than the moment might have predicted.  And yet, she has their undivided attention.

"It's after 7:00.   All the shit in this town shuts down at 10:00," Kerah says bewildered, as if she doesn't know this.

"Not somewhere here," she says, supremely irritated that Kerah does not innately understand her, "somewhere else!  Somewhere not Virginia!"

"Like on vacation?" Asks Kerah, still obtuse.  "Where the fuck do you want to go? You hate cities and you hate wearing your fucking shoes.  You hate being in the fucking car."

Opal has perfected Kerah's venomous glare. She levels it at him now.  She can feel his temper rising to meet hers.  She can feel Adam going still and watchful, ready to save them from each other.

"Not fucking people places," she says witheringly, "other places.  Nature places.  I'm not your goddamn dream anymore! I'm real!  I can't hide here forever, being one of _your_ things."

Her words are 3 feet of double-edged steel thrust directly through his heart and she feels every inch of the cut even as she buries it to the hilt.  If she has learned anything from him, it is that first blood is often synonymous with victory.

Adam comes over to sit on the floor beside her chair.  He takes her hand in one of his, drawing her attention from her wounded Kerah, shielding him and her too.  "You've been thinking about this for a while," he says, not asking.  He lets her choose where she goes next and it tears at her that Adam knows her mind better than her own Kerah.  Adam has seen that she has grown and changed since she emerged from the dream, but Kerah still sees a child, a little girl, something helpless and lost without him.

All the words she had thought she could use are melting out of her mouth before she can give them any shapes because she can feel Kerah getting jagged and sad.  She knows Adam feels it too and he's bristling with protectiveness and he doesn't know which of them needs it more. This is turning into a mess of silence even faster than she expected.

She needs someone good with words to help her unravel it.  Blue would help, but she gets distracted by principles and would just make the air even spikier.  Gansey is best with words, but he talks too much to hear all the things that aren't being said.  She looks directly into Adam's pretty eyes and says softly, "I need Henry."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"  Kerah asks, getting more stormy and betrayed by the second.

Adam knows exactly why and rushes for his laptop. 

"Opal," Kerah says, and the quiet plea in it shreds her, "can't you just talk to me?"

She shakes her head, tears gathering.  "I'm trying."

Adam beckons Opal out to the porch to view Henry, genial and content, on the laptop screen.  Adam leaves her to have the conversation alone.

"What's the hang up, forest lady?" He asks.  Robobee hovers near his ear.

Of all Kerah's loved people, Henry is the one who calls a little to her girl's heart.  He can listen as well as Adam, but isn't as serious about it.  He knows the difference between secrets that need to stay secret and secrets that need to be aired to be excised.  He is clever, but not cutting.  Sometimes Henry's beautiful face and wise eyes make her wish she was a real girl, who could be kissed and held and whispered to.

"I'm trying to tell them that I need more than...here, that I need to get out, but it's already hurting Kerah.  And I barely started."

"Did you start out like Ronan would?  With a proverbial fist in the face?"

She looks down, guilty.

"Yes."

"Well, you'll have to finish the knock out then.  It will hurt him.  He'll probably cry himself to sleep."

Opal pales.  "But he's my . . . my Kerah.  I'm supposed to help him.  How can I-"

"No, no.  You were his dream helper," Henry interrupts.

"Yes, but-"

"Is this a dream?" He asks, a little sharply.

Opal shakes her head.

"Are you still a dream?"

Opal is not sure how to answer this question.  Henry looks down for a moment and she knows Robobee is helping him.  This is one of the reasons she knows he can understand her - he needs his dream thing to come out from his own head.

"You come from a dream, but you're not one anymore.  You are real. Ronan, of all people, knows this. Will you remain a dream thing in the dreaming Barns, or will you leave Never Land and grow up?"

Opal takes a shaky breath, nodding slowly.  He smiles and the real girl part of her aches a little with unspecific longing.

"Ah ha!" He exclaims, "I see you will strap on your armor and slay the dragon, bold jewel."

"But how do we begin?  He won't let me go all at once.  I don't want to do that to him."

"Start small.  A little camping trip together.  Bring his Adam - it will help him adjust."

"He's already so angry," she says, chagrined.

"He loves you.  He won't stay that way," Henry said, "and Adam's probably calmed him down by now.  Look for stray pants on the floor before you go in there!"

Opal wrinkles her nose.  "Gross," she says, but it is sound advice.  "Henry?  I don't think he'll come very far with me," she adds, meaning she is a little scared to consider going forward alone.

"No," Henry agrees, "he probably will not.  The Barns is the center of his universe.  But if you ask us, Blue and Gansey and I will take you anywhere and everywhere.  Out of the reach of man, into the clouds, through the heart of the world.  In fact, I suspect we will need you, forest lady, to show _us_ those secrets."

A nervous shiver of joy runs through her.  Henry hears her wild longing singing in her own real heart.

"Would I have to wear shoes?" She whispers.

Henry makes an exaggerated ick face.

"Only when we walk among common people.  Away from them, no shoe shall oppress you."

She giggles.  Henry gives her a speculative look.

"We may be less wild than you might like. I'm not a big fan of extensive camping.  My hair gets flat."

Settled, calmed, reassured, she goes back into the house, moving slowly in case Adam really did get carried away with soothing Kerah in the usual way.  She finds them in the living room, Kerah pacing furiously, Adam slouched against the wall, posture relaxed but eyes alert.

As she steps into view, Adam stops Kerah's progress with two fingers slipped inside his leather wristbands, an indication that she has arrived and a reminder to exercise patience.  Opal adores him extravagantly for it.  Talking is always so hard.  She is a creature of gestures and actions, too much like Kerah.  She can feel the bridge Adam has built, but he cannot cross it for her.  She started like it was a fight to the death, all her pent up boredom, frustration, and conflict rushing her like a forest fire.  She has to finish like she's building a road, one that can lead as far away as it needs to, but still be a path to return by.

"I love our home, and both of you, but I need more."

Adam looks weary and sad, as though he already knows everything and a short flash of irritation jabs at her.  If he already knows, why won't he just do this for her?  Kerah has moved past his initial shock, and is now giving her all of his considerable focus.

"I think . . . there are things I need to do, _ama via_ things, and I can't do them here."

Adam's gaze grows distant.  She can feel the energy of the _ama via_ reaching out, whispering to him.  Kerah frowns, thoughtful.

"I think Cabeswater is my place.  I wouldn't be the Greywaren anywhere else."

Opal shakes her head.  "No.  I think this is my task.  But, maybe you could come with me, a few places, just to start?"

Kerah disentangles himself from Adam's fingers, sits down on the couch and cradles his head in his hands.  When he looks at her again, there is a request for forgiveness in his eyes, a vulnerability that no one but Adam ever sees.

"You're my kid in every way that counts.  I'll do fucking anything for you, if that's what you need.  It's just . . . We've put a shitload of work into this place, you know.  And if we all leave now, we'll just have to start all over."

Opal's relief and joy and bittersweet sadness crash over her so hard she can barely breathe.  She launches herself into Kerah's lap, burying her face in his shirt, allowing his strong arms to surround her like she is still a little child thing.  Adam adds his embrace around both of them and she feels stronger and safer and more free than she can remember ever feeling.

"I don't want you to abandon the Barns.  It's your heart.  But maybe some short trips.  A week or two?"  Her voice is muffled by Kerah's shirt but they both hear her.  A powerful tension falls away from Kerah.

Adam laughs.  "You could have just said you wanted to go on a trip," he says.  "The two of you are so dramatic."

Opal giggles self-consciously.  Kerah groans.

"We've never really taken a vacation," Adam muses, "just for fun anyway.  I'll try to figure out some national parks on the ley line.  You can pick, Opal.  Thanksgiving break is coming up in a couple weeks.  Is that enough to start with?" He asks her, thumb erasing a tear from her cheek.

She smiles her special Adam smile and he kisses her forehead and Kerah's forehead before leaving to retrieve his laptop and start research.  She suspects his tarot cards will be just as critical a reference.

"Jesus shit, brat, you're going to kill me one of these days."

"You can be a shitty listener when it's something you don't want to hear," she retorts.

"I don't think of you as my thing," he says seriously.  "I know I brought you out, but I don't think I made you.  I think you're more like Cabeswater."

She pulls away from him, back into your own space.  She only looks at him, but she knows he can see she has already guessed.

"Fuck!" He exclaims ruefully, "we need something to take the edge off!"

"Ice cream?" She suggests wryly.

"Whiskey?" He counters.

"Do I get to start drinking now?"

Kerah frowns.  "Ice cream.  Go get that nerdy bastard away from his computer.  He's coming with."

Opal obeys with gleeful alacrity. Finally, her time is coming.  The whole world awaits.


End file.
